Innateness, Immutability, and CRC Distortion

The Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum have a shadow web site that they link to under several names, none of which I'm going to give here. Sometimes there's offensive, ignorant stuff they are dying to say, but somewhere down deep inside they know how ridiculous it sounds, so they put it on a different web site than their official one, and link to it. I take it as a good sign, they do know when they are being offensive, and they know that people can tell. They can't control their impulses so they do it on the down low.

If it's any surprise, the domain is registered to the same guy who registered the old RecallMontgomerySchoolBoard.com, as well as the current official CRC web site.

So now they've put up a new statement, trying to tie the recent ruling against marriage equality to the MCPS sex-ed curriculum. I'm going to take one piece of this idiocy for now (don't worry, there's more than one meal in the oven), just the first two paragraphs.

Weast and Nancy Navarro must be sick about the landmark decision of the Maryland Court of Appeals. As reportedhere on June 14th, Weast, Navarro and the rest of the Board, except Steve Abrams voted to sneak into the unconstitutional sex ed curriculum a statement that homosexual conduct is “innate.” At the hearing, parents pointed out that there is no credible scientific evidence for the existence of a “gay gene.” Weast and the Board refused to listen to the parents and boldly proclaimed that the gay gene exists and homosexual conduct is most assuredly “innate.”

It's pretty hard to be sneaky when you're sitting in a crowded boardroom, surrounded by people with signs and TV cameras, with your image and every word you say streaming out on the worldwide web and live television.

The wording that sexual orientation is "innate" has been in the curriculum since it was first proposed by the team of pediatricians. The Superintendent's office and all their lawyers discussed it and decided to keep it, the citizens advisory committee discussed it and kept it, the school board read it, talked about it, and kept it. The CRC is whining because on the day of the final vote some wording used in the the tenth grade class was added to the eighth grade class, to make them consistent.

Here, they start out talking about the word "innate," and then seem to think they're really hitting hard when they say, At the hearing, parents pointed out that there is no credible scientific evidence for the existence of a “gay gene.” Because to them, "innate" and "gay gene" are the same thing.

Oh, love this: Weast and the Board refused to listen to the parents and boldly proclaimed that the gay gene exists and homosexual conduct is most assuredly “innate.”

No, that little sentence has two lies, very efficient. They never said there was a "gay gene," never mind "boldly proclaiming" it. And neither Weast nor the school board said a thing about "homosexual conduct" being innate. Nothing is said anywhere in the whole curriculum about "homosexual conduct" or anything that gay people do. No "homosexual behavior," no "homosexual sex," no nothing. It's just about how people feel. No conduct.

We're going on three years of this, non-stop.

By the way, the marriage ruling they're talking about does not use the word "innate," even once. It talks about immutability, but never innateness.

Sexual orientation is innate. Everybody knows that. I can't tell you why some people are funny, some are good-looking, some get fat easily -- I don't know if there's a funny gene, or a good-looking gene, or a fat gene. I doubt that there are any of those. But these are ways some people are, innately.

But the down-low CRC haven't made their point yet. All these lies are just being told so they can get to the good part, this has just been the set-up.

Unfortunately, the Maryland Court of Appeals has determined quite the opposite. The Court stated repeatedly that homosexual conduct is not immutable (the term lawyers use for innate, for example, skin color is immutable, sex was thought to be immutable, but the Board also tells kids to change their sex so the Court of Appeals would disagree with the Board on that as well). The Court quoted legal decisions from all over the country, even California, which have ruled likewise. The Court also quoted laws from every state in the union except Massachusetts to support its finding that no gay gene exists.

To review. In the first paragraph they pretended that "innate" meant "gay gene." They also pretended that "sexual orientation" was the same as "homosexual conduct."

Now they assert that "innate" is the same thing as "immutable," which is simply bizarre. The two concepts are not the same at all.

Listen, this is weird: the CRC should like "innate," because it doesn't mean "immutable."

Somebody who is innately funny doesn't have to be funny all the time, and in fact if their life is full of tragedy they may never be funny. The innately good-looking person might dress badly and have a bad haircut, or slump, or get burned. People who innately tend to be fat can lose weight. They aren't immutably fat. (I am glad of this, by the way.)

You can get your crooked teeth straightened, you can dye your hair, and if you're gay you can stuff yourself into the closet. All these things are innate and not immutable.

Immutable means that something can't be changed. If the schools had said that sexual orientation was immutable, a legitimate argument might ensue, but they didn't say that. Innate and immutable are not the same, in fact the concepts hardly overlap.

For purposes of law, the courts have to decide what kinds of traits deserve to be protected from discrimination. I'm no lawyer and I don't know how it all works, but it seems they give extra points to "immutable" traits. I can see the sense of that, but of course it's not absolute -- religion, for instance, gets protection, even though it's not immutable.

And I should point out that it is not true that The Court stated repeatedly that homosexual conduct is not immutable. The opinion against marriage equality does discuss laws about various forms of sexual activity, and it does discuss the immutability of homosexuality, and concludes that even though some courts have ruled that it is immutable, this particular court doesn't think there is enough evidence to say that it is. It says this once: "we decline on the record in the present case to recognize sexual orientation as an immutable trait and therefore a suspect or quasi-suspect classification." Where, in their legal-eagle-lingo, "suspect" means something special having to do with whether it is OK to discriminate on the basis of a trait.

There's just so much in this posting on this gross web site, even in these two ugly paragraphs. Like, look what they threw into the middle of that bizarre, rambling sentence: the Board also tells kids to change their sex.

I know, not everybody is going to back and read the curriculum. But people, I guarantee, you won't find any place that "the Board also tells kids to change their sex." The tenth grade curriculum says, "Some transgender individuals want to live their life as the opposite gender or have surgery to become the opposite gender. Many others do not want to do so." A little later it says, "While cross-dressers change their clothes, transsexuals sometimes change their body by means of hormone therapy or sexual reassignment therapy to match how they feel."

Those statements are absolutely true. Nobody tells kids to change their sex; this kind of disregard for truth only proves that you can't believe anything the CRC says. It's not just a matter of disagreeing with their opinion. They will say anything, it is irrelevant to them whether it's true or not.

The CRC talks like they've really got the school district over a barrel here. If that was true, why would they have to lie about what's in the curriculum and what the superintendent and board members say? Why do they have to pretend that "innate," "gay gene," and "immutable" all mean the same thing? Do they expect to convince the people of Montgomery County, using a technique of misquoting people and redefining the English language?